Freedom.

Democrats reclaimed the word – along with “patriot,” the flag, the ”USA USA USA” chant and who and what it means to be “American” – at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was like a mirror image reflecting how the Republicans have hypocritically used each to denigrate the nation, our heroes, our history, culture and heritage and most of all, uproot our foundational values and ideals that make America, well, great.

In so doing, Democrats also finally embraced head-on the issues they had so long self-consciously smothered:  abortion rights, climate change, gun violence, and yes, immigration.

For these are all integral to what “freedom” actually means and what they mean when they say Election 2024 is “existential.”

“This is a big part about what this election is about. Freedom,” declared Minnesota Gov. Tim (“Coach”) Walz, who Democrats nominated for vice president. “When Republicans use the word ‘freedom,’ they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations — free to pollute your air and water. And banks — free to take advantage of customers.

“But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall…. I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe. “That’s what this is all about. The responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want.”

A number of Republicans also took to the podium to declare, as did former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you’re not a Democrat, you’re a patriot.”

“How can a party claim to be patriotic if it idolizes a man who tried to overthrow a free and fair election?” asked former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who was a member of the House Jan. 6 Committee, so he knows something about that. “How can a party claim to stand for liberty if it sees a fight for freedom in Ukraine—an attack pitting tyranny against democracy, a challenge to everything our nation claims to be—and it retreats, it equivocates, it nominates a man who is weirdly obsessed with Putin and his running mate who said, ‘I don’t care what happens in Ukraine’?”

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination affirming she would uphold America’s bedrock freedoms, starting with promising to sign a bill restoring reproductive rights, and adding – reminiscent of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” –  that  “in this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake: the freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship; the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride; the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis; and the freedom that unlocks all the others, the freedom to vote.” She promised to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

Because of our freedoms, America has been the lodestar for millions of immigrants who built the nation with their bodies, their minds, their hearts. “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one) used to be the nation’s motto until the Cold War). The immigration system has been horrendously broken for decades with Republicans obstructing any solution for fear these immigrants would become voting citizens, and because the manufactured “border crisis” has been such a potent political rallying cry for them.

“I refuse to play politics with our security,” Harris said, pledging to sign the bipartisan border security bill that Trump killed. “I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system.  We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”

Similarly, protecting our freedom, defending democracy requires America to continue to lead abroad.

“As president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny,” Harris declared. “I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.”

The America she sees is “a nation that is ready to move forward, ready for the next step in the incredible journey that is America,” shifting into what has become her rallying cry, ”We’re not going back.”

Indeed, to deliver this most important speech of her life, she chose to wear a dark blue suit in contrast to the sea of suffragist white among the delegates, who were acknowledging her history-making nomination as potentially the first woman, the first black woman and the first South Asian president in U.S. history. But it was also a rejection of Trump’s backward-looking presidency and campaign to put himself back in the Oval Office.

Election 2024 is a battle not just to never go back to Trump’s failed, destructive, chaotic, imbecilic presidency but to all that is implicit in his “Make America Great Again” promise: returning to a time when women,  non-whites, non-heterosexuals were non-citizens undeserving of basic human rights, when those with money wielded outsized, aristocratic power over society.

While Trump – and his Project 2025 “playbook” for an autocratic regime prepared by his closest advisers – would reverse progress made toward that mythical “more perfect union” with such hard-won freedoms as voting rights, marriage rights and civil rights, Harris would continue a forward march. (Poster seen on “threads”: Dance the Harris Walz: Two steps forward. No steps back”)

In contrast to Trump’s vision of “American carnage” (recycled from 2016), Harris said, “America, let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness, and endless possibilities.”

Her voice rising in power and intensity, she reclaimed what it means to be American: ”We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world. And on behalf of our children and grandchildren, and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment.

“It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love. To fight for the ideals we cherish. And to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth. The privilege and pride of being an American.”